Page 23 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

SHE THINKS OF ME

For more than a month, we’ve tried to get past the dragon, with various degrees of failure. Every step means a new challenge, a new obstacle, set up by a thief with clearly too much access to enchantments. Some of these barriers I recognize from my own castle .

The slow process would bother me more if it didn’t mean spending more time with her.

We enter the cave each time, side by side.

I’ve always fought at the front of battles, leading them, being the first one charging forward.

I’ve never had anyone beside me, until her.

I can’t use my powers. We’re on even footing.

We both take down each obstacle, one by one.

But—more times than not, I’m the one who ends up injured.

I have become her shield.

I’m stitching a wound I got myself, from an arrow I didn’t avoid because I was too busy making sure she wasn’t getting stabbed through by a pike. She didn’t, of course. But I did.

She’s watching me far too carefully. I tear the stitch with my teeth, and a flash of emotion curls in the air. Desire.

At my teeth?

I wonder if she could possibly know how many times I’ve imagined those teeth running over every inch of her, biting places that might scare her.

“Emotions,” she says, her voice soft and raspy. “What do they feel like?”

She’s asking what it’s like to feel other people’s, of course. I used to hate her questions, like scalpels, poking at the most sensitive parts of me, but now I treasure them, because they mean she cares. She wants to know more about me. Or perhaps she’s just curious.

Either way, I tell her almost everything now.

“They feel ... well, they feel ...” I say, struggling for the right words.

For centuries, no one has dared ask me anything so personal.

It’s a muscle I’m still training, still getting used to, to even talk this much to anyone at all.

It’s work to lower my defenses, to make a pathway through the wall I’ve been forced to build around myself as ruler.

It’s something we share. The risk of vulnerability.

“They are fainter versions of your own emotions, floating through the air. At first, they were overwhelming. They would all bleed together. Now I can control whose I seek out. Which I focus on.”

“Do they ... affect your own emotions?” she asks.

“Never,” I say. Never until you .

“What do ... what do mine feel like?”

They feel like me losing my mind.

They feel like me sitting at your bedside like a fool, trying to tease meaning from your spikes of feeling while you dream.

They feel like me becoming an utter captive to your every mood and desire.

My hands stop their task. Slowly, I look up. Meet her gaze. I take a step toward her. She swallows. “Yours are red.”

“Red?” The word is just a breath.

I nod. “ Red .” I huff a laugh. That seems to startle her.

I feel the stitches of my self-control snapping, one by one. I take another step toward her. Toward all that red . Her aura is like my shadows, reaching toward me. My own shadows are reaching back. Both drawn toward our mutual ruin.

She’s leaned against the wall. I’m right in front of her now. She tilts her neck back to continue meeting my eyes.

“Other emotions never affected my own ... until you.”

At my admission, her eyes widen. Perhaps I’ve said too much. I should take a step back. I should portal away.

But I am done with these games. With the hiding. I realize now I have never been in control of my emotions at all, at least when it comes to her. My entire world has been off its axis since the first moment I saw her.

I lean down, and I can see how hard she’s breathing. I watch the rise and fall of her chest, in a silk dress I’ve already memorized several times over. Her pulse is quickening. I want it to fucking race . I want her to feel even a fraction of my obsession.

“I feel them so strongly, as if they’re my own,” I say, studying her slowly, top to bottom, taking my time. When my eyes meet hers again, I find them blazing . The curiosity and surprise in her emotions are both drowned out by a flaming, uncurling want.

“I can taste them, Isla,” I say, my voice almost pained, and—and she isn’t breathing.

I lean my head down, toward hers, and her lips part, as if on instinct, as if telling me exactly what she wants.

I duck lower, until I can feel her breath on my mouth.

I breathe her in, and it’s enough. It’s enough to make my entire body almost tremble with need.

“Do you like the taste?” she asks, her voice a husky rasp.

I feel a slow smile spreading across my face. I risk taking a strand of her hair and tucking it behind her ear. My fingers just slightly brush her skin, and she shivers.

I love the taste .

“Yes,” is all I admit.

And then, though it’s the last thing I want to do, though it’s the last thing she wants me to do, I turn away, before I admit far more. Before I admit everything and have her against this wall.

But her voice stops me in my tracks. “Why won’t you kiss me?” she demands.

My world lurches to a halt. Slowly, I turn back around. She’s still pressed against the wall, panting.

I expect to feel nerves from her ... but she’s angry. She’s confused. Under my notice, though, she swallows.

“Why would I kiss you?” I ask, my voice harsh, as if I’m not currently losing my mind that she even suggested I might.

She glares at my rudeness. “You’ve done it before.”

“And you stabbed me for it,” I snarl.

Her eyes are still narrowed, burning greener with intensity. My voice is still full of malice, with forced disgust, when I say, “Is that what you want? For me to kiss you again?”

Say it. Please .

Beg for it, like I asked you to .

My tone has her baring her teeth at me. “No.”

Her emotions tell a very different story, but I’m done antagonizing her. Why can’t I just be honest? Why couldn’t I just have kissed her when she asked?

Now, it’s too late.

I try to make up for my mistake. “I don’t like people touching me,” I tell her, offering something else. “I don’t kiss.”

“You kissed me ,” she says again, as if she didn’t mean to. Red sears her cheeks immediately, shame and embarrassment flaring.

I hate it. I don’t ever want her to feel shame around me. Nothing she could ever say or think or do would change the way I feel about her.

But she doesn’t know that. She can’t sense emotions, like I can. All she has are my harsh words and repulsive actions.

I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to fill her with doubt. I don’t want her to glare at me, not anymore. I don’t want her to hate me.

“I did.” I take a step toward her again. “And if it hadn’t ended with a blade through my chest, it would have been perfect.”

My words are still rough, but they make her gasp.

I can’t believe I said that.

I can’t believe it took me this long.

Her lips are parted. Her heart is racing. We’re so close, again. I could kiss her, I want to kiss her , but she told me no. So instead, I ask something else.

“Was it that bad, Hearteater?” I say, my voice rough and quiet. “Bad enough to want me dead?”

I’m so close, I can hear her quiet drawing of breath. “I wouldn’t know,” she finally says. “I’d never done it before.”

A rush of twisted contentment fills me. I was the first. It shouldn’t mean anything ... but it does. I think about the man in the hall. I should never have let him touch her. I should have been the only person who ever did.

My head lowers. My lips brush against her cheek. “You didn’t kiss me like that was your first time,” I say, remembering the frenzy, the way she pulled my hair, the way she groaned into my throat and sucked my tongue.

I wish she would do it again. I wouldn’t even mind if she stabbed me afterward.

Her eyes are on mine when she says, very clearly, “Neither did you.”

Her emotions are flaring, meeting, caressing mine, little pants escaping her lips as I get closer. She closes her eyes.

But she doesn’t amend her previous statement. She doesn’t tell me what she wants. So, all I do is reach up to drag my knuckles softly against her cheek. She shivers. I can feel her anticipation. Her desire.

Her wants don’t reach her lips, so I leave her again, room filled with our joint regret.

That night, I watch her sleep. I decide to tell her and the quiet darkness the truth.

“If I had any right to happiness at all ... it would be you. I would choose you.”

I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, fingers lingering. She softly groans, as if she can sense me. Before I can move my hand, she’s leaning against it.

“ Grim ,” she breathes, in just a whisper.

My entire body jolts, as if she’s stabbed me again.

She’s dreaming about me.

She thinks about me .

I want to crawl inside her head, I want to see her dreams, I want to live in them alongside her. Because only in our heads could we ever live a life of peace.

I shake my head.

“What are you doing to me?” I ask, as she sighs against my skin. She shifts, as if her dream has taken a turn.

I’ve lost my mind. I’ve seen blood and entrails strewn across the battlefield, yet what twists my stomach is seeing her frown . Why is she frowning in her sleep? Who can I kill to stop that?

The need pounding in my blood is nearly enough to bring me to my knees.

You’re dangerous. You are a curse .

I want you anyway.